The Political Science Reviewer
type: channel
description: Established in 1971, the Political Science Reviewer has served for more than a half century as a venue for political theory and philosophy that resists disciplinary dogmas and novelties. We endeavor to give voice to a range of scholars and to put these voices into traditional conversation with each other. Authors are encouraged to submit both articles and symposium ideas.
publisher: School of Economic Thought and Leadership
language: en
publication name: The Political Science Reviewer
issn: 0091-3715
items: Editor's Note
items: Notes on Contributors
items: To Redeem Reason
items: Is Locke a Libertarian?
items: Harvey C. Mansfield's Machiavelli's Effectual Truth: Creating the Modern World
items: Did Alexander Hamilton Adopt the New “Political Science” Proposed by Charles de Montesquieu and David Hume?
items: Civic Education for the Republic--If You Can Keep It
items: Recovering the Metaphysics of Common Sense: Thomas Reid, the Scottish Philosophy, and American Higher Education
items: Political Fitness
items: The Symbiosis of Political Form and Moral Character:
items: Holiday Satire or Political Dialogue?
items: Wilson Carey McWilliam's The Idea of Fraternity in America at 50
items: The Periclean Paradox
items: Almost Chosen Prophet
items: The (Catholic?) Soul of the (American) Republic
items: Moses, Machiavelli, and Augustine's Republicanism
items: Alasdair MacIntyre, the Concept of Tradition, and the Catholic University
items: Augustine and Political Friendship as Metaxy
items: Rival Revivals of Aquinas’s Tyrannicide Doctrine
items: “Parchment Barriers” versus Separation of Functions
items: Glenn Arthur “Chip” Hughes (1951-2024)
items: Xenophon's Political Realism: The Opening of the Cyropaedia
items: The Devil and Humpty Dumpty
items: Pope Francis
items: Stephanie Shonekan and Adam Seagrave's Race and the American Story
items: The First Conservative Accommodation of the New Deal

Editor's Note
type: item
description: Editor's Note: Christian Political Thought
subject: Notes
  topic: section
subject: Editor's Note
  topic: keywords
rights: Copyright (c) 2026 The Political Science Reviewer
date: 2026-03-03
publication date: 2026-03-03
starting page: iii
ending page: iv

Notes on Contributors
type: item
subject: Notes
  topic: section
subject: Notes
  topic: keywords
rights: Copyright (c) 2026 The Political Science Reviewer
date: 2026-03-03
publication date: 2026-03-03
starting page: v
ending page: xi

To Redeem Reason
type: item
description: This essay reclaims Mary Wollstonecraft as a deeply religious thinker whose defense of women’s rational capacity corrects modernity’s flawed, disembodied notion of reason and its damaging effects on views of women. Echoing Pope Benedict XVI’s critique of such rationality, I argue that the “masculine” reason often criticized by modern feminists is actually an erroneous conception of reason itself—one Wollstonecraft challenged more fundamentally than later feminists. Contrary to the common portrayal of Wollstonecraft as a secular Enlightenment radical, and building on my 2021 book The Rights of Women, I show she was a religiously inspired moral thinker. Her ideas rest on the biblical truth that women and men are equally rational beings made in God’s image, destined for eternal communion with Him. I trace depictions of women’s rationality from Christine de Pizan’s early fifteenth-century pre-Reformation defense through the errors of Catholic nominalism, Reformation voluntarism, and Enlightenment abstraction. Wollstonecraft used available intellectual resources to reject voluntarist views of divine, political, and patriarchal authority. Instead, she reclaimed a richer, authoritative reason grounded in theological anthropology, emphasizing moral formation and personal virtue. Her vision for women prioritizes virtuous self-governance, guided by good parents, teachers, and books. This integrates—albeit imperfectly—women’s rational capacities with their embodied duties, especially motherhood. Though theologically distinct from Benedict’s Catholic synthesis of faith and reason, body and soul, Wollstonecraft’s virtue-centered framework corrects modern feminism’s liberal-autonomy models. It affirms women’s full humanity and rationality, honors embodied sexual difference, and elevates the private and public value of caregiving.
subject: Articles
  topic: section
subject: Wollstonecraft
  topic: keywords
subject: feminism
  topic: keywords
subject: Christianity
  topic: keywords
subject: voluntarism
  topic: keywords
subject: Reason
  topic: keywords
creator: Erika Bachiochi
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System
date: 2026-03-03
publication date: 2026-03-03
starting page: 216
ending page: 246

Is Locke a Libertarian?
type: item
description: Libertarians generally trace their intellectual lineage to John Locke, and a growing number of prominent conservatives in effect agree with their reading. Locke, however, grants several important broad powers to the state that go well beyond what any libertarian would countenance. The Lockean and libertarian political projects are also animated by different ends. Libertarians aim to emancipate the individual from coercive strictures, whereas Locke aims to preserve mankind, and he thus recognizes binding positive duties to prevent the needless deaths of others. Locke does, however, unwittingly invite the libertarian reinterpretation of his politics. There is an undeniable libertarian flavor to his thought. Ultimately, libertarianism is a likely result of Lockeanism that exploits tensions in Locke’s thought to produce a theory much more radical in its political implications.
subject: Articles
  topic: section
subject: John Locke
  topic: keywords
subject: Libertarianism
  topic: keywords
subject: Classical Liberalism
  topic: keywords
creator: David Azerrad
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 The Political Science Reviewer
date: 2026-06-05
publication date: 2026-06-05

Harvey C. Mansfield's Machiavelli's Effectual Truth: Creating the Modern World
type: item
description: Author Meets Critics
subject: Author Meets Critics
  topic: section
subject: Machiavelli
  topic: keywords
subject: Tocqueville
  topic: keywords
subject: Charles de Montesquieu
  topic: keywords
creator: Harvey C. Mansfield
creator: Maurizio Viroli
creator: Clifford Orwin
creator: Paul Carrese
creator: Pierre Manent
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System
date: 2026-03-03
publication date: 2026-03-03
starting page: 296
ending page: 345

Did Alexander Hamilton Adopt the New “Political Science” Proposed by Charles de Montesquieu and David Hume?
type: item
description: Alexander Hamilton is frequently labeled an Enlightenment figure influenced primarily by David Hume and Charles de Montesquieu. This paper contends that his political thought remained firmly rooted in the Aristotelian-Ciceronian-Christian tradition. Hamilton rejected the modern “new political science” that sought to secure liberty and welfare through institutional mechanisms alone, without virtuous rulers. Though engaging Montesquieu’s separation of powers, he and Madison advocated only a flexible, partial blending consistent with the classical mixed regime. Against Hume’s view of men as knaves whose passions must be mechanically balanced in a self-regulating system, Hamilton insisted reason must govern passions, virtue is indispensable, and government exists to constrain passions toward reason and justice. The end of politics, for Hamilton, was the common good—the safety and non-hedonistic happiness of the people—with justice and virtue as central aims. Law was an ordinance of reason, not will; judges applied objective natural law, and the Constitution itself was fundamental law binding even majorities. Hamilton’s framework thus reveals profound continuity with classical and Christian sources rather than the modern philosophic innovations of Hume and Montesquieu.
subject: Articles
  topic: section
subject: Alexander Hamilton
  topic: keywords
subject: david hume
  topic: keywords
subject: Charles de Montesquieu
  topic: keywords
subject: political science
  topic: keywords
subject: end of politics
  topic: keywords
creator: Carlos A. Casanova
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System
date: 2026-01-27
publication date: 2026-01-27

Civic Education for the Republic--If You Can Keep It
type: item
description: As the United States celebrates the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, Americans should be concerned about the state of their republic. Using ideas from The Federalist, Irving Babbitt, René Girard, and Nathaniel Hawthorne, this article argues that decreasing civic knowledge is part of a broader deterioration of America’s unwritten constitution. The decline of the unwritten constitution—that is, America’s turn away from the wisdom embedded in historical customs, social structures, and political practices—is a serious problem that undermines the functioning of the written constitution, weakens citizen character formation, and erodes the norms and restraints that defuse social conflicts and limit political violence. This article concludes by claiming the successful mending of America’s unwritten constitution will depend, to a significant degree, on developing a form of civic education that shapes the minds and souls of citizens in ways that equip them to keep the republic.
subject: Articles
  topic: section
subject: Violence
  topic: keywords
subject: Girard
  topic: keywords
subject: unwritten constitution
  topic: keywords
subject: civic education
  topic: keywords
subject: Federalist Papers
  topic: keywords
subject: Irving Babbitt
  topic: keywords
subject: René Girard
  topic: keywords
creator: Justin Garrison
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 The Political Science Reviewer
date: 2026-06-24
publication date: 2026-06-24

Recovering the Metaphysics of Common Sense: Thomas Reid, the Scottish Philosophy, and American Higher Education
type: item
description: This article argues for recovering Thomas Reid’s Scottish Common Sense philosophy as an antidote to critical theory in contemporary American higher education. From the Revolution to the Civil War, Common Sense realism—led by John Witherspoon and James McCosh—formed an orthodoxy in colleges like Princeton, Harvard, and Brown, rejecting the “ideal theory” of René Descartes, John Locke, and David Hume in favor of direct perception, self-evident first principles, and a divinely ordered reality. Critical theory, rooted in Herbert Marcuse’s negative thinking, echoes ideal theory’s skepticism by reducing truth to power and emancipation. Common Sense metaphysics can counter this by refocusing on the healthy human condition, the whole person, and objective excellence, restoring shared discourse for self-government. The article recommends incorporating natural theology, moral philosophy, and rhetoric into new classical and civic education institutes.
subject: Articles
  topic: section
subject: common sense
  topic: keywords
subject: civic education
  topic: keywords
subject: Thomas Reid
  topic: keywords
subject: John Witherspoon
  topic: keywords
subject: Higher Education
  topic: keywords
subject: American Founding
  topic: keywords
subject: American Philosophy
  topic: keywords
subject: Political Philosophy
  topic: keywords
subject: Critical Theory
  topic: keywords
subject: david hume
  topic: keywords
creator: Aaron A. Zubia
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 The Political Science Reviewer
date: 2026-07-17
publication date: 2026-07-17

Political Fitness
type: item
description: This paper argues that physical fitness, historically central to classical education, is underemphasized in the modern revival of classical and civic education, allowing vitalist movements to exploit this gap. Despite this, there remain resources for democratic civic educators to emphasize physical excellence in civic education. Drawing on Xenophon’s Memorabilia, this paper examines Socrates’ dialogue with Epigenes, exploring how physical fitness is linked to both duties of citizenship and individual well-being, making it both a personal and a civic virtue. Socrates argues that fitness not only prepares citizens for potential martial demands but also enhances intellectual and personal excellence, countering the notion that it is merely a professional athlete’s concern. The paper then traces the historical role of physical education in American civic life, from the robust demands of colonial survival to formalized programs like Eisenhower’s President’s Council on Youth Fitness. However, post-World War II shifts toward sedentary lifestyles and egalitarian fitness policies, such as the Clinton and Obama administrations’ focus on inclusive participation over excellence, have coincided with declining national fitness levels. I then critique this “democratization” of fitness standards, suggesting it may contribute to, or at least fail to remedy, widespread physical decline, as evidenced by rising obesity rates and weakened military standards. I conclude by advocating for reintegrating physical education into civic education to foster democratic virtues, and urge a reevaluation of the intellectual and curricular role of physical excellence.
subject: Articles
  topic: section
subject: civic education
  topic: keywords
subject: physical fitness
  topic: keywords
subject: sports
  topic: keywords
creator: Philip D. Bunn
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 The Political Science Reviewer
date: 2026-07-22
publication date: 2026-07-22

The Symbiosis of Political Form and Moral Character:
type: item
description: The relationship between political forms and character is symbiotic. Forms assume a certain character type that can function within their limits and constraints. Forms also shape character as individuals are compelled to conform to them. Conformity, however, depends on a willingness to abide by forms that can never fully account for circumstances. Consequently, in some circumstances it is necessary for individuals to deviate from conventional forms in order to realize the ends of politics (order, justice, social harmony, happiness, and liberty). In other circumstances, deviation has the opposite effect. William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Ethics provide interesting and unconventional contexts in which to examine the problem of forms and character. Using the political theories of Edmund Burke, Alexis de Tocqueville, and Irving Babbitt to analyze the relationship between forms and character in these works, it is apparent that realization of the ends of politics requires moral dexterity. Moral universality becomes evident only in historical particularity.
subject: Articles
  topic: section
subject: character
  topic: keywords
subject: Lord of the Flies
  topic: keywords
subject: Tocqueville
  topic: keywords
subject: Cormac McCarthy
  topic: keywords
creator: Michael P. Federici
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 The Political Science Reviewer
date: 2026-06-05
publication date: 2026-06-05

Notes on Contributors
type: item
subject: Notes
  topic: section
subject: Notes
  topic: keywords
creator: Richard Avramenko
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System
date: 2025-08-01
publication date: 2025-08-01
starting page: iv
ending page: vii

Editor's Note
type: item
subject: Notes
  topic: section
subject: Editor's Note
  topic: keywords
creator: Richard Avramenko
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System
date: 2025-08-01
publication date: 2025-08-01

Holiday Satire or Political Dialogue?
type: item
description: Scholars have gestured at the importance of the Augustinian dimension to Thomas More’s Utopia (De optimo reipublicae, 1516)since the early biographers of Thomas More recounted his renowned set of lectures on Augustine’s City of God (De civitate Dei) in the St. Lawrence parish church in London. This article works through the textual resonances in each text looking precisely at superbia to demonstrate how Thomas More engages in the project of educating the reader’s political imagination. The psychagogic effects of Utopia demonstrate More’s participation in an Augustinian tradition where politics plays a key role in securing temporal peace and ameliorating the politically vicious effects of pride. By pushing on the Augustinian dimension of Thomas More’s Utopia rooted in the tempering of political pride, one can affirm the satirical elements of the dialogue and its serious political proposals.
subject: Articles
  topic: section
subject: superbia
  topic: keywords
subject: political satire
  topic: keywords
subject: Augustinian politics
  topic: keywords
subject: Utopia
  topic: keywords
subject: political psychagogy
  topic: keywords
subject: pride
  topic: keywords
subject: The City of God
  topic: keywords
creator: Chase Mendoza
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System
date: 2026-03-03
publication date: 2026-03-03
starting page: 125
ending page: 154

Wilson Carey McWilliam's The Idea of Fraternity in America at 50
type: item
description: A symposium on Wilson Carey McWilliam's The Idea of Fraternity in America
subject: Author Meets Critics
  topic: section
subject: fraternity
  topic: keywords
creator: Susan McWilliams Barndt
creator: Geoffrey Kurtz
creator: Derek W. M. Barker
creator: Emma Rodman
creator: Natalie Fuehrer Taylor
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System
date: 2025-08-01
publication date: 2025-08-01
starting page: 245
ending page: 272

The Periclean Paradox
type: item
description: Prudence, according to Aristotle, is the “only virtue peculiar to the ruler,” and receives substantial attention in Book VI of the Nicomachean Ethics. Despite this attention, prudence is hard to define and even more difficult to explain in practice. Aristotle offers a similarly enigmatic presentation of the purpose of Book VI: identifying the principles of correct reason. He makes few direct statements about these principles or their relation to the intellect’s capacities. I argue that both presentations are deliberately opaque to caution against straightforward conceptions of realizing the intellect’s purpose—to discern truth. This caution highlights the opacity of prudence and its dependence upon excellences it cannot itself supply, including examined experience and the capacity to discover the correct principles of action.
subject: Articles
  topic: section
subject: Aristotle
  topic: keywords
subject: Catholic political thought
  topic: keywords
subject: Virtue
  topic: keywords
subject: Prudence
  topic: keywords
creator: Michael E. Promisel
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Copyright, by The Political Science Reviewer
date: 2026-03-03
publication date: 2026-03-03
starting page: 1
ending page: 32

Almost Chosen Prophet
type: item
description: This essay examines the role of collective memory in the political theologies of two important American thinkers: Mercy Otis Warren and Abraham Lincoln. Warren, a founding-era Anti-Federalist, wrote one of the first authoritative accounts of the American Revolution in an effort to preserve a collective memory of the Founding, which for her was intertwined with covenantal Christianity. Warren is an important forerunner to Lincoln, whose construction of the collective memory of the Founding (modeled on the ancient Hebrews) set the stage for understanding the present and future of American politics. The essay concludes with a comparison of Warren’s and Lincoln’s accounts of American collective memory and affirms the necessity of these memories in the establishment of civil religion for both thinkers.
subject: Articles
  topic: section
subject: Abraham Lincoln
  topic: keywords
subject: Mercy Otis Warren
  topic: keywords
subject: American Founding
  topic: keywords
subject: Civil War
  topic: keywords
subject: American political thought
  topic: keywords
subject: collective memory
  topic: keywords
subject: Old Testament
  topic: keywords
subject: political rhetoric
  topic: keywords
subject: civil religion
  topic: keywords
creator: Kirstin Birkhaug
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System
date: 2026-03-03
publication date: 2026-03-03
starting page: 183
ending page: 215

The (Catholic?) Soul of the (American) Republic
type: item
description: In Politics III, Aristotle famously argues a point common in ancient accounts of democracies and republics, namely, that “no man can practice virtue who is living the life of a mechanic or laborer.” Cicero, not wholly sharing Aristotle’s view, nevertheless likewise relegates this portion of the population to a secondary role. Modern republics, on the other hand, seem to be animated by a kind of universal call to republican virtue and office, such that early American statesman Charles Carroll observed in 1828 that the “protracted existence” of the American republic depended on the “morality, sobriety, and industry of the people, and on no part more than on the mechanics, forming in our cities the greatest number of their most useful inhabitants.” The well-educated Carroll knew the arguments of the ancients, but his thinking rested on an insight they did not possess: the Christian and Catholic intellectual tradition, which presents a fundamental alteration to the older understanding. While he was no “Christian nationalist,” this paper will argue that Carroll’s Catholicism was crucial to his understanding of republicanism.
subject: Articles
  topic: section
subject: citizenship
  topic: keywords
subject: virtue
  topic: keywords
subject: Aristotle
  topic: keywords
subject: Cicero
  topic: keywords
subject: Charles Carroll
  topic: keywords
subject: American founding
  topic: keywords
subject: republicanism
  topic: keywords
creator: Justin Litke
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System
date: 2026-03-03
publication date: 2026-03-03
starting page: 155
ending page: 182

Moses, Machiavelli, and Augustine's Republicanism
type: item
description: This article explores The City of God’s treatment of Moses, the biblical founder of the Hebrew republic. Moses, we maintain, is for Augustine an exemplar of the “model statesman.” Two sets of contrasts discussed here draw out the significance of Augustine’s treatment of Moses. First is Augustine’s comparison of Moses with Lycurgus, the mythical refounder of Sparta. Second is a comparison of Augustine’s analysis of these figures with Machiavelli’s. Augustine’s Moses emerges from these contrasts as an exemplar of republicanism, defined by honesty, publicity, and humility and as such may still speak to political theorists today.
subject: Articles
  topic: section
subject: Moses
  topic: keywords
subject: Machiavelli
  topic: keywords
subject: Augustine
  topic: keywords
subject: Republicanism
  topic: keywords
subject: The City of God
  topic: keywords
creator: Jakub Voboril
creator: Mary Keys
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Political Science Reviewer
date: 2026-03-03
publication date: 2026-03-03
starting page: 61
ending page: 90

Alasdair MacIntyre, the Concept of Tradition, and the Catholic University
type: item
description: This paper considers Alasdair MacIntyre’s explication of three rival versions of moral enquiry—encyclopedia, genealogy, and tradition—as a framework for thinking about the modern Catholic university. In applying MacIntyre’s analysis to the contemporary situation, the paper argues that “tradition hires” rather than “mission hires” are required to maintain the identity of an authentically Catholic university. At the same time, the paper contends that those faculty who practice moral enquiry in the mode of encyclopedia or genealogy nonetheless contribute to a thriving university. Finally, the paper draws on the theologian, Yves Congar, to argue that a plurality of traditions exist within the Catholic intellectual tradition.
subject: Articles
  topic: section
subject: MacIntyre
  topic: keywords
subject: catholic
  topic: keywords
subject: university
  topic: keywords
subject: tradition
  topic: keywords
creator: Christopher Justin Brophy
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Political Science Reviewer
date: 2026-03-03
publication date: 2026-03-03
starting page: 276
ending page: 295

Augustine and Political Friendship as Metaxy
type: item
description: This article examines Augustine’s concept of political friendship as a counterpoint to liberalism’s reliance on self-interest to achieve political harmony, a premise increasingly doubted for failing to foster civic virtue. Using Eric Voegelin’s notion of metaxy—the “in-between” realm of human existence—it portrays Augustine’s commonwealth as a space where the city of God (love of God) and the earthly city (love of self) converge. Augustine defines a people as rational beings bound by common objects of love, contrasting with liberalism’s distorted Augustinian roots, evident in thinkers like Pascal and Locke. Political friendship, infused with Ciceronian ideas and eschatological depth, balances justice and power through prudent choices. This metaxic commonwealth, both divine and deficient, offers a unique ontological status. Amid liberalism’s crisis, Augustine’s vision—prioritizing justice over power and likening community to a joyful, improvisational "jubilus"—presents a compelling alternative for nurturing political friendship in contemporary society.
subject: Articles
  topic: section
subject: Augustine
  topic: keywords
subject: friendship
  topic: keywords
subject: republicanism
  topic: keywords
subject: liberalism
  topic: keywords
creator: John von Heyking
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System
date: 2026-03-03
publication date: 2026-03-03
starting page: 33
ending page: 60

Rival Revivals of Aquinas’s Tyrannicide Doctrine
type: item
description: The early-modern resistance theories developed by Juan de Mariana, S.J. (1536-1624) and Francisco Suárez, S.J. (1548-1617), are less novel, and more consistent with Thomas Aquinas’s framework for tyrannicide in the De regno (c. 1267) than leading intellectual historians allow. This article makes the case that Mariana and Suárez clarify, refine, and develop Aquinas’s highly permissive and substantially vague writings on tyrannicide in rival ways. It demonstrates how medieval and ultimately Roman considerations of tyranny and tyrannicide remain present to the seventeenth-century thinkers who define so many modern ideas about rights of revolution, sovereignty, and the relationship between Church and state.
subject: Articles
  topic: section
subject: Thomas Aquinas
  topic: keywords
subject: revolution
  topic: keywords
subject: tyranny
  topic: keywords
subject: tyrannicide
  topic: keywords
subject: Early Modern Political Thought
  topic: keywords
creator: Robert Wyllie
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System
date: 2026-03-03
publication date: 2026-03-03
starting page: 91
ending page: 124

Editor's Note
type: item
description: Editors note.
subject: Notes
  topic: section
subject: notes
  topic: keywords
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System
date: 2025-01-16
publication date: 2025-01-16
starting page: i
ending page: v

“Parchment Barriers” versus Separation of Functions
type: item
description: This article contends that the burgeoning literature advancing the thesis that the Constitution's separation of powers is a separation of functions enables us to understand more fully the critique of The Federalist against the first state constitutions. The first state constitutions, I argue, differ from the Constitution insofar as the former rely on "parchment barriers" that require both legislators to exercise a virtuous self-restraint and the people to have a watchful spirit while the latter depends on popular self-restraint in deference to the political process. The theoretical reason for this difference between the first state constitutions and the Constitution lies in the fact that whereas the first state constitutions were designed primarily with the end in view of preventing governmental tyranny, the Constitution is designed both to prevent governmental tyranny and ensure effective government.
subject: Articles
  topic: section
subject: First State Constitutions
  topic: keywords
subject: Separation of Powers
  topic: keywords
subject: Separation of Functions
  topic: keywords
creator: Kevin Akalski
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System
date: 2026-01-20
publication date: 2026-01-20

Notes on Contributors
type: item
description: Notes
subject: Notes
  topic: section
subject: Notes
  topic: keywords
creator: Richard Avramenko
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System
date: 2025-01-16
publication date: 2025-01-16
starting page: vi
ending page: x

Glenn Arthur “Chip” Hughes (1951-2024)
type: item
description: In Memoriam: Chip Hughes
subject: In Memoriam
  topic: section
subject: Obituary
  topic: keywords
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System
date: 2025-01-16
publication date: 2025-01-16
starting page: 1
ending page: 2

Xenophon's Political Realism: The Opening of the Cyropaedia
type: item
description: Readers of The Education of Cyrus have long pondered its basic message. In this essay, I argue for the centrality of the first chapter of the work to our understanding of the work as a whole. There, Xenophon indicates that he was led to the study of Cyrus by idealistic hopes engendered by the awe he felt at Cyrus’s accomplishments. Once he had come to understand certain key aspects of Cyrus’s rule, Xenophon ceased to be gripped by those hopes. In this way, the introductory chapter of the Cyropaedia anticipates and encapsulates key teachings of the work as a whole, both about the true character of Cyrus’s excellence at ruling and about Xenophon’s interest in Cyrus. The chapter provides substantial evidence for a realist reading of the Cyropaedia as a corrective to idealistic hopes, particularly the hope that knowledge, if joined with political power, could solve all the problems of political life.
subject: Articles
  topic: section
subject: Xenophon, Cyrus, Cyropaedia, Realism
  topic: keywords
creator: Dana Jalbert Stauffer
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System
date: 2025-08-01
publication date: 2025-08-01
starting page: 1
ending page: 22

The Devil and Humpty Dumpty
type: item
description: Using René Girard’s mimetic theory, this article breaks new and important ground in the scholarly treatment of Robert Penn Warren’s award-winning All the King’s Men. The novel depicts a society in the midst of a major political and social crisis. Anger, envy, resentment, and corruption are widespread. For Girard, such a crisis almost always culminates in an act of spectacular community violence—a scapegoating event—that brings peace and renews order. This is exactly how the novel concludes. By intuiting (if not consciously understanding) the relationship between mimetic conflict and violence, the novel illustrates what Girard sees as the “satanic” foundation of political and social order as such. This article not only sheds new light on the novel. It also demonstrates the value of Girard’s mimetic theory for research in the areas of American literature and political theory.
subject: Articles
  topic: section
subject: René Girard, mimetic theory, scapegoat, Satan, Robert Penn Warren, All the King’s Men
  topic: keywords
creator: Justin D. Garrison
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System
date: 2025-08-01
publication date: 2025-08-01
starting page: 175
ending page: 204

Pope Francis
type: item
description: This article explores the (qualified) Peronism of the Argentinian pope, his tendency to redefine Catholic thought in a broadly humanitarian and progressivist direction, and his questionable advocacy of enhanced Christian-Communist collaboration. By confusing compassion with charity, pacifism with peace, and the universality of the Christian religion with the effacement of national distinctions, Francis has weakened the Catholic Church's long-time refusal to identify freedom, justice, and peace with “ideological dreaming.” Special attention is paid to the pope's largely "humanitarian" reading of the Parable of the Good Samaritan in his 2020 encyclical Fratelli tutti.
subject: Articles
  topic: section
subject: Pope Francis
  topic: keywords
subject: Latin American Political Thought
  topic: keywords
subject: Peronism
  topic: keywords
creator: Daniel J. Mahoney
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System
date: 2025-01-16
publication date: 2025-01-16
starting page: 169
ending page: 188

Stephanie Shonekan and Adam Seagrave's Race and the American Story
type: item
subject: Author Meets Critics
  topic: section
subject: Race
  topic: keywords
subject: America
  topic: keywords
creator: Adam Seagrave
creator: Stephanie Shonekin
creator: Daniella Mascarenhas
creator: Nicholas Buccola
creator: Brandon Davis
creator: Rodolfo K. Hernandez
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System
date: 2025-01-16
publication date: 2025-01-16
starting page: 319
ending page: 350

The First Conservative Accommodation of the New Deal
type: item
description: Today thinkers associated with religiously informed “New Right” or “common good” conservatism have affirmed the New Deal, urging protection for workers and the poor and the political counterbalancing of wealthy and powerful elites. And yet they have often done so while also rejecting or seeking to somehow displace the Constitution. This development makes it appropriate to reconsider two of the first conservatives to accept the New Deal, Francis Graham Wilson (1901–1976) and Peter Viereck (1916–2006). Their conservatism was rooted in religious conviction and an evolutionary conception of politics and constitutional change that appealed to moderation, balance, and compromise. This article explicates their intellectual accommodation with the New Deal and then shows briefly how the administration of Dwight Eisenhower proceeded practically along quite similar lines. Today’s conservative reconciliation with the New Deal should revisit how these earlier conservatives managed to do so while also affirming the Constitution.
subject: Articles
  topic: section
subject: American constitutionalism
  topic: keywords
subject: conservatism
  topic: keywords
subject: Christian political thought
  topic: keywords
subject: Peter Viereck
  topic: keywords
subject: Francis Graham Wilson
  topic: keywords
creator: Johnathan O’Neill
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 The Political Science Reviewer
date: 2026-03-24
publication date: 2026-03-24